Everyone loves GoldenEye 007 right now, so what better way to celebrate the Nintendo 64 classic than with a marking of bookt?
From Boss Fight Books comes Alyse Knorr’s The Making of GoldenEye 007, a look at the classic FPS in book form. Launched on Kickstarter recently, the book is already pledged up.
With 14 days to go, 611 backers have pledged £19,050, far more than the project’s initial £2,039 goal.
Bond—James Bond. In the 80s and 90s, the debonair superspy’s games failed to live up to the giddy thrills of his films. That all changed when British studio Rare unleashed GoldenEye 007 in 1997. In basements and college dorms across the world, friends bumped shoulders while shooting, knifing, exploding, and slapping each other’s digital faces in the Nintendo 64 game that would redefine the modern first-person shooter genre and become the most badass party game of its generation.
But GoldenEye’s success was far from a sure thing. For years of development, GoldenEye’s team of rookie developers were shooting in the dark with no sense of what the N64 or its controller would be like, and the game’s relentless violence horrified higher-ups at squeaky clean Nintendo. As development lagged far behind the debut of the tie-in film GoldenEye, the game nearly came out an entire Bond movie too late.
Through extensive interviews with GoldenEye’s creators, writer and scholar Alyse Knorr traces the story of how this unlikely licensed game reinvigorated a franchise and a genre. Learn all the stories behind how this iconic title was developed, and why GoldenEye 007 has continued to kick the living daylights out of every other Bond game since.
The book features original interviews with GoldenEye 007‘s developers: Duncan Botwood, David Doak, Mark Edmonds, Steve Ellis, Karl Hilton, Martin Hollis, Brett Jones, Grant Kirkhope, Graeme Norgate, and Ady Smith. various scholars, developers, experts, and fans such as John Romero and Simon Parkin are also featured in the book.
A $6 bid will get you the DRM-free electronic copy of the book, in MOBI, EPUB, and PDF formats. Or, pay $15 for the paperback version and the electronic copy of The Making of GoldenEye 007. Want more?
$30 will bag you a the deluxe hard cover copy (with printed lithocase cover and among other things, an additional chapter), along with eBooks, name in the book, while $40 gets you all of the above, and a bit more besides. Other options are available, and the success of the initial funding drive suggests that stretch goals will be activated.
In truth, the stretch goals are way down on your list of priorities as a GoldenEye 007 fan.
To back this project, head to the Making of GoldenEye 007 book Kickstarter page. Backers receive their copy in December 2022 on the current schedule.
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Christian Cawley is a writer and editor who covers consumer electronics, IT, and entertainment media. He has written for publications such as Computer Weekly, Linux Format, MakeUseOf.com, and Tech Radar.
He also produces podcasts, has a cigar box guitar, and of course, loves retro gaming.